Greece – Attica, Mesogia

Location: Attica, Mesogia, Greece

The Greek pilot takes place in the Mesogia Area, located in the Attica region of central Greece, which places it at the outskirts of the Athenian metropolis. Mesogia area includes the municipalities of Koropi, Lavrio, N. Makri and the interconnected islands of Kea, Andros and Tinos. It has been the pilot site for several Horizon 2020 and European projects, including Coordinet, Platone, and, now, EV4EU. It is a semi-rural area that includes approximately 225,000 customers in its Low-Voltage (LV) and Medium-Voltage (MV) networks, ranging from households to small, medium, and large industries. The area benefits from installations of various forms of renewables, including wind farms and PV, as well as net metering and rooftop PVs. 

The municipality of Koropi, which is located south-east of the city of Athens, was selected as the pilot area. Koropi is serving as a connection point between the capital city of Greece, the International Airport of Athens, and the eastern coastal part of Attica. More than 30.000 residents live in the city, and the greater Municipality of Kropia hosts a major industrial zone of Attica.

The main aspects of the Greek demo, led by HEDNO, are the deployment and testing of the Open V2X management platform for public chargers, developed by PPC, the integration and testing of the flexibility algorithms for local and system-wide grid services developed by DTU and INESC-ID, and the investigation of exploitation and marketability strategies for the proposed solutions with the contribution of CITROËN. Additionally, five public EV charging points were installed in Koropi by PPC, and the respective 5 LV monitoring devices were installed by HEDNO in the secondary substations behind every charger. 

Business Use- Cases tested in the Greek Demonstrator:​​

Green Charging 

The Green Charging use case aims to demonstrate how the O-V2X Management Platform enables environmentally sustainable and cost-efficient EV charging by leveraging real-time information on renewable energy availability. Through intelligent coordination between the platform, the DSO, and the public charging network, EV users are encouraged to charge their vehicles when the share of renewable generation in the grid mix is high or when network conditions are most favourable. 

The O-V2X platform dynamically integrates network tariff profiles provided by the DSO’s Decision Support System (DSS) to incentivize EV users to select optimal charging and discharging windows that better align renewable energy production with EV demand. EV drivers access this functionality through the platform’s user interface, where a push-notification mechanism informs them about temporal and spatial tariff incentives. These signals promote cost-effective charging behaviour while improving the synchronization between local RES generation and EV demand, thereby enhancing the grid’s renewable energy hosting capacity. 

By the end of the project, the goal is to validate the technical feasibility, user acceptance, and market potential of these environmentally driven EV charging schemes within the Greek pilot ecosystem. 

Flexible capacity contracts 

The Flexible Capacity Contracts use case aims to demonstrate how the O-V2X Management Platform enables intelligent and socially fair allocation of grid power capacity among electric vehicle users under network constraints. This approach supports DSOs in maintaining grid stability during periods of high demand or limited capacity by dynamically managing EV charging and discharging behaviours. 

Through direct communication with the DSO’s Decision Support System (DSS), the O-V2X platform receives flexibility requests expressed as power capacity limitations within predefined 4-hour time windows. In response, the platform optimally determines charging and discharging setpoints for all connected EVs, ensuring that the aggregated EV demand complies with the grid’s operational limits while maintaining fairness among users. 

The social fairness mechanism ensures that available grid power is distributed equitably—no user is disproportionately restricted or advantaged. At the same time, the system leverages available V2G capacities to locally enhance effective grid capacity, allowing: i) additional EVs to charge during constrained periods, ii) existing EVs to charge at higher power rates, or iii) maintaining charging levels for plugged-in EVs even under power limitation conditions. 

By the end of the project, the objective is to validate the technical feasibility, operational performance, and user acceptance of these flexibility-based service models within the Greek pilot, paving the way for their integration into future energy market frameworks. 

Tools & Development

Open V2X Management Platform (O-V2X-MP) 

The O-V2X Management Platform developed by PPC is a core technological pillar of the EV4EU project. The platform provides an open, flexible framework designed to coordinate and manage EV charging networks, enabling smooth integration of multiple technologies and stakeholders across the e-mobility ecosystem, from infrastructure operators to end users including System Operators  

The platform offers asset management services for CPOs, supporting efficient monitoring, control, and optimization of charging assets. Through standardized interfaces (e.g., OCPP 1.6/2.0.1), it ensures interoperability among heterogeneous charging technologies and vendors. It also embeds robust cybersecurity, data integrity, and user interface performance capabilities, ensuring secure and reliable operation in real-world environments. 

From the user perspective, the platform provides a dedicated interface through which EV drivers can authenticate with public charging networks, visualize charger availability and pricing information, and access smart charging functionalities. These include demand-response capabilities, dynamic scheduling of charging sessions based on grid and market signals, and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) operations that allow bidirectional energy exchange between vehicles and the power system. 

An additional CPO tool that acts as a support tool for strategic charging infrastructure planning is the Forecasting Support Tool, which provides AI-driven load forecasting capabilities for individual charging stations up to 30 days ahead. Developed as a key concept for CPOs, the tool will become fully operational once sufficient real-world data is collected from the Koropi charging site. 

DSO Support System (DSS) 

The DSO Support System (DSS) developed by HEDNO is a collection of software tools and capabilities, developed for EV4EU and the Greek demo. The DSS is a collection of applications designed to monitor and control the electric power distribution networks efficiently and reliably. It acts as a decision support system to assist the control room and field operating personnel with the monitoring and control of the electric distribution system. In the centre of the DSS lies a software platform which can host all the required functionalities and interface with field equipment and other platforms, integrating existing DSO functionalities, new installations (such as the LV monitoring system), other platforms (such as the O-V2X MP) and any other demo related component realizing the demo’s BUCs. That way the DSS improves the efficiency and precision of many tasks, ranging from simple, such as network visualisation, to more advanced, such as dynamic decision-making on resources optimisation. The main purpose of the DSS Server component is to enable the seamless communication between the DSS and the CPO platform (O-V2X-MP). This integration will facilitate the exchange of data and trigger events using standardized protocols, thereby achieving a higher level of network knowledge and visibility. 

Monitoring and Forecasting Services 

The DSS is capable of integrating advance monitoring and forecasting services developed by DTU to assist the DSO’s decision making. The goal of these services is to provide a framework where the states of distribution grid are monitored and critical situations are predicted, with the goal of activating flexibility to avoid them. To achieve this, it is essential to predict situations where overvoltage (BUC4) or congestion (BUC5) may arise at the substation level, enabling the timely activation of flexibility mechanisms. These mechanisms rely on the utilization of EV charging and V2G flexibility by responding to incentives and capacity constraints. To emulate the real-time operation and activation workflow of the forecasting services, a simulation framework is developed. The framework replicates the sequential steps involved in service deployment, allowing for realistic testing and validation. The forecasting service includes the following key components within the simulation environment: 

• Monitoring and forecasting: Prediction of the apparent power of the substation transformer to inform about both the possible overvoltage and congestion situations in the short-term future.
• Flexibility activation process: Activation of EV charging and V2G flexibility based on 4-hour ahead forecasts, using tariff changes or capacity limits to guide the charging process. 

Integration of platforms 

The integration between DSS and O-V2X-MP is achieved via the Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API, enabling the exchange of grid-related data. A REST API is a set of rules and conventions for building and interacting with web services. This interface allows the CPO platform to receive dynamic network tariffs  and capacity limitations designed by DSO to incentivize or disincentivize EV users for charging and discharging according to real-time grid conditions, thereby contributing to optimal network operation.